The following appears in the April 1997 issue of the Syracuse PEACE NEWSLETTER (PNL), published monthly by the Syracuse Peace Council, Syracuse, New York, USA.
White supremacist groups in the 90's are changing their tactics. They simultaneously disclaim violence and encourage members and sympathizers to commit anonymous crimes hidden by night. Media attention has focused recently on hate groups' Internet use, but blanketing neighborhoods with hate literature is another common tactic. This can raise funds and sympathy, if not direct membership. And like more showy parades, mailbox campaigns can terrorize Klan targets.
Last summer the Klan and its "invisible empire" made Watertown the latest upstate community to suffer this tactic. Locacted 76 miles north of Syracuse in Jefferson County, Watertown hosts Fort Drum, the largest Army installation in the northeast. Fort Drum's 1984 expansion boosted Watertown's population so fast it caused a housing shortage. Neighboring counties felt the shock: waves of displaced poor and homeless arrived and needed social services. Fort Drum's expansion also boosted Watertown's minority population from a scant 3% to almost 12%. Overall its population went up by almost a quarter.
Shawn Stucker served as a soldier in Fort Drum's 10th Mountain Division, 41st Engineer Battalion, from 1993 until his abrupt discharge last summer.
On June 9, 1996, Stucker and his wife Tabitha went to a Watertown aprtment building occupied by African American and interracial couples. They stuffed mailboxes with 3 x 5 cards that said, "White Power" and "They Breed, We Feed." A phone number on the cards led to the New Order Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Two residents filed complaints with the Watertown police. They told police they felt angry, offended and feared for their lives.
In statements to the police, the Stuckers each claimed that the other one "stayed in the truck" while he or she placed cards in the mailboxes. The Stuckers were arraigned separately on second degree aggravated harassment charges in Watertown City Court, Tabitha on June 18 and Shawn on June 19.
Within days of the Stuckers' court appearances, the Watertown Salvation Army building was spray-painted with racist graffiti- swastikas, "KKK," death and bomb threats. The phrase "by Sean Stucker' also appeared with the graffiti. Police assumed local teen-age vandalism. A police spokesman cryptcally told the local paper that whoever did it was "making a statement about the Stuckers."
Under Major General Thomas Burdette's command, the Army took immediate action. Within two days of arraignment Shawn Stucker was discharged. But Fort Drum officials saw Stucker's case as an "isolated incident." They weren't moved to review potential extremist activities on post. Fort Drum's Equal Employment Opportunity office did inform "The Watertown Times" that base training now requires all officers to learn and recognize the signs and symbols of organized hate activity. (This reflects general US military policies instituted since the December 7, 1995, racially-motivated slayings of Jackie Burden and Michael James by former Special Forces soldier James Burmeister at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Skinhead sympathizer Burmeister is serving a life sentence without parole for murdering the black couple.)
Shawn and Tabitha Stucker went home to Ohio, where they had a baby last summer. The Stuckers did not return to Watertown on February 3 when the case was heard in Watertown City Court and Judge James Haberson, Jr., dismissed the charges. The Stuckers had admitted stuffing the mailboxes, but the defense's strategy was to obscure "intent" by separating the conduct (putting cards in mailboxes) from the content of their message. Judge Haberson agreed that the prosecution failed to prove the Stuckers' intent was specifically to "harass, annoy or alarm."
One of the original complainants was James Ballard. He is an African American student at Jefferson Community College who is without both car and telephone. According to him, last summer brought more racially-charged harassment and violence to his neighborhood. He has spoken often to the local press about feeling threatened by Klan literature in his mailbox. He says others identifying themslves as Klan have threatened him since, but he has refused to move out of his apartment. Besides cooperating with the District Attorney's Office, Ballard has been in contact with State Attorney General Dennis Vacco's Watertown office. He says both advise him to contact the FBI in Syracuse and to hire a private attorney to explore a federal civil rights case.
Jefferson County D.A. James T. King never called Jim Ballard as a witness when he had the case in court, but the next day he vowed to appeal Judge Haberson's decision. King's office filed its Appellant's Brief the first week in March. He said publicly, "I think any person of good conscience doesn't appreciate inroads by the Ku Klux Klan or any other hate organization. And obviously we have to severely scrutinize any of their activities."
King's appeal had other, frustrating results. Because it is a federal crime to put anything other than US mail in a designated mailbox, Ballard reported the Stuckers to the US postal inspector. He says the postal inspector informed him they could not act while the case is on appeal and they could not act without the original police report. Then, police told Ballard they could not provide the report on his original complaint while the case was still on appeal.
Since last June, Jim Ballard has sometimes felt, "No one seems to care."
That may be changing. Recently he has spoken to some classes at the community college. As we go to press, JIm Ballard is still without legal assistance. But faculty and students have reacted with moral support and active help (see sidebar). In the broader sense, "the people" are also taking action.
As it happens, King's court appeal coincides with state-level policy initiatives on hate crimes. Speaking by telephone, Mike Zabel of the State Attorney General's Buffalo office said they fully supported King's appeal, though the Attorney General would not become involved in the Stucker case.
At a press conference the week after Zabel and I spoke, Governor Pataki and the State Attorney General unveiled Pataki's Hate Crimes Act of 1997. While the Febraury 13 press release noted prominantly that the new law would apply to anti-Semitic graffiti found in Mamaroneck, Long Island, the bill covers a broad and explicit list of protected groups. The bill notes that hate crimes in New York State have increased. Based on model legislation drafted by the Anti-Defamation League, the bill redefines hate crime misdemeanors as more serious offenses and raises the minimum sentences for hate crimes already classified as Category A and B felonies.
The Hate Crimes Act of 1997 has been endorsed by the New York Urban League, the Anti-Defamation League, the NYS Coalition Against Hate Crimes, and New York City's Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. Governor Pataki told the press, "People who act on hate and destroy property by painting swastikas on buildings or burning down churches because of the color of the people who worship there, need to know they will face swift and serious consequences. Hate crimes... disrupt entire communities and cannot be tolerated by a civilized society."
In its latest documentation of US hate group activity, for the year 1996, Klanwatch estimates there are at least 26 different Ku Klux Klan groups in the US and about 150 organized racist television and radio shows, not counting commercial purveyors of hate on local talk radio. Some 150,000 to 200,000 people subscribe to publications, attend marches and rallies, and donate money to hate groups. The spectrum of groups such as various Klans, Aryan Nations, Christian Identity, Skinheads, neo-Nazis and others have fluid, overlapping memberships and share certain basic premises.
Almost two-thirds of hate crimes in tye US are committed by whites against blacks. Most are not perpetrated by formal group members. Instead, "freelancers" like the Stuckers are trying to stop what they perceive as unacceptable and "unAmerican" changes. While Pataki's new bill addresses property damage suffered by targeted groups, legislating human relations is harder.
Most hate crimes occur as areas undergo rapid integration. This has certainly been so in Watertwon and Jefferson County since the large-scale expansion of Fort Drum a dozen years ago. Hate groups exploit white fears of change imposed from above or outside during times of economic hardship. Other clashes have occurred in upstate New york, for example, with the influx of large numbers of seasonal migrant workers. Planned, wide-spread prison-building as a cure for rural poverty in New York State began under Gov. Mario Cuomo. Since then, many more smaller communities' primary experience with diversity has come from their uneasy proximity to prisons and "shock camps" whose inmates are disproporionately people of color from urban centers. African Americans in particular are scapegoated for white suffering. At the southern edge of our Western and central New York region, the Klan is preparing to march in Pittsburgh on April 5.
Most hate groups are now adjusting their focus to include a mix of old and new rhetoric. Their classic targets of hate have expanded beyond Jews and African Americans to include gays and lesbians, immigrants, "liberals," adding the promotion of anti-abortion, "pro-family" agendas. White supremacists thereby align themselves with more "respectable" conservative politicians. Hate groups strive not to be placed on the lunatic fringe, and dismissing them in those terms can create the dangerous illusion that "it's not a problem here."
Increased visibility for the Stucker case can support Jim Ballard's efforts to address the acts of hate committed against him and his neighbors. So far there has not been an active, distint organization in Watertown to counteract hate crime. But many in Watertown are concerned that the Stuckers' mailbox-stuffing was no aberration.
Rebecca teaches sociology at Jefferson Community College in Watertown. She is researching the religious right and extremist groups. A long-time SPC supporter, she helped organize regional support for Capt. Lawrence Rockwood several years ago during his court-martial at Fort Drum for action protesting prison abuse in Haiti during the US invasion there.
[SIDEBAR]
There is a widely-held hope that hate groups will "just go away if we ignore them." Cochran, however, has spent the past five years insisting that such quiet denial only encouraged him to greater boldness as the Aryan Nations' "advance man." He now heads the Pennsylvania-based Education and Vigilance Network. He consults with lawyers drafting anti-hate legislation, works closely with Klanwatch and similar groups, and travels widely to conduct community workshops on hate crime. The Army Special Forces Operations Command invited him to speak at Fort Bragg after the Burmeister murders. He will be in Watertwon at Jefferson Community College on April 17 and 18. Many citizens hope a more formal community plan will emerge from his public forums. Call (315)786-2294 for an exact agenda.
--Nancy Rhodes